


Doing the Work

by amoonlitknight



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27553852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoonlitknight/pseuds/amoonlitknight
Summary: In the time since Prime was destroyed, Adora has had time to think about love, and what it means.Love is always hard work. Loving Catra--everything about Catra--is something you have to choose, for good reason.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 105





	Doing the Work

Life is hard.

Life is hard, and, honestly, it just never _stops_ being hard. Every time you think that you're finally going to cross that last line, peak that last hill, off in the distance you see another, higher peak, with a line to cross even further away from where you are now than the whole sum of how far you'd already gone. It just kept coming.

Adora knew that, like few others did.

Love, though...

“I love you,” Adora whispered into Catra's ear, gripping her hips roughly to encourage her to thrust harder.

Catra said nothing in response except to hiss needfully between her teeth, grinning hungrily as she gave Adora a fierce kiss.

...sometimes, love was easy.

For example, love was easy in the immediate aftermath of victory. When the whole world seemed like a rainbow, and magic was surging around you, energizing you, _elevating_ you. Even when that immediate rush went away, there was something simple and a little delirious about the way it was easy, in that moment, to be in love. Openly, in front of everyone, whether they laughed and cheered to see you kissing or just rolled their eyes and groaned, “about time...”

In that moment, as daylight faded away and the veil of the sky fell away to reveal the sublime beauty of the blanket of stars, kisses were obvious. Necessary.  
  
Easy. For a night, a day, a week. A month, even, since everyone agreed that if anyone deserved a break, it was Adora, and there was a general resignation to the fact that the break must include Catra if it was to be satisfying at all.

But then, one day—even if it's the dawn of the tomorrow of a hundred tomorrows—the sun rose, and that peak in the distance began nagging at your attention.  
  
There was work to do.

A world to rebuild. Peace to maintain, reinforce, codify, and protect. Old enemies to make peace with and old friends to invite to the future, even if you sometimes had to come to grips with the fact that they wanted a slightly different future than you expected. Wastelands to explore, unify, and reclaim.In times like that—when things were less certain—whether love was easy or not could change, from moment to moment.

Especially with _her._

For example: it was easy _now,_ with Catra on top of her, a clever little toy tucked into both of them to help make all the _need_ they'd wound themselves into come true. It had stopped being nice and romantic and gentle awhile ago, because they were Adora and Catra and their love was as sweaty and rough and hard as they were. She was pinned down, doing everything she could to tease just a little bit more out of Catra's vicious grin because it was _so_ good and _so_ hard and she _needed_ it right now.

Hard it might be, but it was _easy._ Especially here, in Brightmoon, where the addition of stars to nighttime had only exaggerated the ridiculous beauty of the place. At least, when they didn't think about it too hard.

That's all it took. A stray thought. A memory, or a dozen of them. The weight of history.

Adora and Catra knew they avoided the subject. They did. But sometimes they would be in the middle of chatting and just both, on some unspoken cue, stop talking. They'd look out at the mountains, over the hills and out towards the Whispering Woods and dwell in the uncomfortable reality that they'd laughed together as children dreaming about destroying this place. Catra, in particular, _really_ didn't like talking about it, since there were still some battle scars on the walls here and there that she'd made personally.

That was the hard part. The reality that now is only real because of _then_. And the past was...living.

And life is hard.

They'd survived the past, but not unscathed.

“Catra,” Adora gasped, reaching up, grabbing her torso right under her breast, trying to stop her flexing.  
  
Catra ignored her—well, sort of. She was just elsewhere. Her mismatched eyes were boring into Adora's, but not really _seeing_ so much as holding steady on something sure, and beautiful, and kind, as her mind let itself wander.

“Catra!”

it must have been something in the tone of her voice, because Catra's eyes lost that glazed-over look instantly. She blinked, shook her head. Frowned.

“Huh? Oh, I—”

And then she saw, or _felt_ what had happened, and froze.

Adora had gained a very specific insight about love, in the short time since the war had ended. Something she'd learned _because_ it wasn't always easy.

Love isn't something you feel. Nor is it something that just exists, outside of you, that if you're very lucky, might be a part of your life.

Love is something you _do_. Something you _choose_. Something you work at.

If this moment, this night, was easy—it was because a thousand nights before it weren't.

Like the nights Catra and Adora had sat up together, once the honeymoon of victory had fallen away, and they'd started bickering and arguing again about everything and anything, not least of all their very fraught past together. At a certain point, they were forced to be honest about...about, well...

About everything.

It was either that or walk away from each other, and even in those lonely days, neither of them wanted that, even for a moment.

So they were honest, no matter how much it hurt.

About who they were. About what had gone wrong, for all these years. About why Adora had found it so easy to leave, and why Catra had refused to leave with her. About why Adora had never let herself accept how hurt Catra was, why she'd been so quick to accept that her best friend was suddenly her worst enemy—and why Catra had been determined to make it true. Why Glimmer and Bow had replaced Catra...and how they never had, not really.

About what they _wanted_ to be. Which was the scariest part, somehow—alone, together, at the top of a tower in Brightmoon, the most beautiful place either of them had ever been, lit only with the gentle light of a sidetable lamp and the moons as if there is nothing else in the entire universe anymore except the sound of each others' voices and all the pain you know you have to listen to before it is done.

Love was easy when it came naturally. It doesn't come naturally when you're counting the scars you've left on each other.

That's _when_ you did it. Chose to do it, as hard as you could, because you made it real one moment at a time.

Or at least, that's what Adora whispered to Catra when it got hardest and there was nothing to do but cry.  
  
If they could stay in the moment right after Prime was wiped away forever, they would. Absolutely. Love waas easy then, and obvious. But they couldn't.

Life moved on. So you _choose_ to keep loving, regardless. And if you are very, very lucky, that choice is rewarded with love in return. And that love turns into something that the two of them in particular had been thirsty for their entire lives.

“Hey. Hey,” Adora whispered, as she saw Catra's eyes start to well up. “It's okay.”  
  
“I didn't mean it. I'm sorry, Adora, I—”

“You didn't mean to. I know.”

“Adora—”

“ _You didn't mean to,”_ Adora insisted, reaching up to stroke Catra's cheek. “It's fine.”  
  
Catra smiled, faintly, in relief.

They kissed, gently now. Softly. Catra was panting, trying to realign her brain as it pinballed between lust, sorrow, regret, anger, fear, and ten thousand other emotions, and Adora just relaxed and laid back and rewarded each quiet breath with a peck on the lips.

That, and politely ignored where Catra's claws had been digging into her ribs.

Sometimes the work of love is about setting boundaries, especially when the two of you had just spent two and a half years trying to ruin each other. Rules. Adora and Catra had come to agree on a few, stuff like: If you say you promise, you _promise_. If you lie, it's better to admit you lied than try to keep the lie up and cover for yourself. No means no and stop means stop. A couple secret words they could use to tell the other when something was wrong without letting anyone else in on it.

A sacred agreement that no matter what, they'd at least listen to the other's explanation and not assume the worst. Never again.  
  
Those, and two special rules, because of who they were. One was that She-Ra was for emergencies, not for everyday— _especially_ not in the sparring yard unless Catra specifically asked for it, and not in bed, _ever_.

The other, well...

That's the thing about boundaries. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is cross them, willingly, together.

“Hey,” Adora whispered. “Catra. Look at me.”  
  
Catra's eyes, as always, seemed to shine in the low light—two mismatched gems in the dark.

“Let's break a rule,” Adora said, stroking her cheek lovingly.

“You mean—”

“Mmmhmm,” Adora said, raising a hand and turning her fingers inwards.

Catra glanced away—nervous, yes, but wary and eager at the same time. Which was a little absurd, considering that she was fully mounted inside Adora, but that seemed so, so far away just this second.

The She-Ra stuff? It was a whole...thing. Psychological. It kept the peace.

Catra's claws _hurt_. They _really_ hurt. Catra's claws could dig into concrete. Catra's claws could hurt _She-Ra_.

But she didn't mean it. It was an instinct thing; Catra was more than a little bit a cat, after all, and anyone who'd spent too much time around the alley toms and dams knew exactly how gentle they were when they were in the yowling mood. There was something in Catra that _needed_ to claw, needed to _bite._

Needed to _claim_.

But it _hurt_.

And it scared Catra to death. She'd spent too long torn between wanting to tear Adora to shreds and beg her to love her unreservedly to enjoy having it shoved in her face by _instinct._ When she talked about it, she talked in shame, rather than embarrassment. She was humiliated by how badly the impulse to latch on, dig in with her claws and teeth would come. She hated how much it made her feel like she was out of control, how much it bordered on the desire to make Adora _hurt_ for all the pain she'd put Catra through was.

But still, if she was honest, she admitted: sometimes it was just so overwhelming that it just _happened_. She didn't mean it.

But they'd agreed. No claws. No biting.

Right?

“Adora, it was an accident. You don't have to—”

She hushed as Adora's finger pressed on her lips, although she frowned as she did so. Adora couldn't help but chuckle at her sour face.

“I want to.”  
  
“No. Come on. Seriously?”

“Yeah. It's a body thing, right?”

She felt for Catra, a little. It was always super annoying to be given permission but know that you're not really _supposed_ to be given permission, so you feel obligated to resist despite _desperately_ wanting to just indulge.

They shared the kind of quiet silence where you kissed to fill the time for thinking. Sex is like that.

“I could really hurt you, though,” Catra breathed, more than said. Her hand cupped Adora's face gently, dragging a wetness over her cheekbone that was, in a very real sense, the whole problem. “That's why we agreed to...to...”

There were three words that, in a certain context, meant more than “I love you” ever could. Certainly, people were very inclined to be quite liberal with “I love you” while someone else was having sex with them. But these three were not the sort of thing you just blurted out. There was meant to be a little more thought behind them.

“I trust you,” Adora whispered.

It was cheating, really. Especially between them.  
  
Catra lived to hear that—craved it. Needed it.

When Adora had first felt trust—real trust, not just assumption and obedience, the cold and unfeeling exchange of obligation—it had been _so_ much. Glimmer and Bow, trusting a stranger when she claimed wild nonsense about some sword in the woods speaking to her, communicating something to her she didn't really understand. It had been like water to someone whose throat was dry as leather. It was enough to turn her against everything she'd ever known and been raised to, like _that_. That's how starved they were of it.

And Catra was if anything, _worse_.

But now, in the moment, Catra paused—frozen again, really, trapped in indecision between two different _wants_.

“I mean it,” she murmured.

“ _I_ mean it. Come on, Catra. I'm tough. And I heal quick.”

To emphasize this, she gently guided Catra's hand back to her ribs, which were still burning. Their fingers mingled together in the hot, wet blood.  
  
Catra sighed warmly, and shuddered.

“See? It's fine,” Adora said. “I'm not scared.”

"Adora—”

The trouble with Catra's feeble attempts at resistance was that they both knew Adora had already primed the ignition. All she had to do was turn the key.

“I'm _yours,_ ” she said. It was just a fact.

The pain came quickly, as she knew it would. But that didn't dull it at all—it was hot and piercing and ran up her spine like lightning.

Catra leaned over her, eyes leering with a cold, angry determination. Her free hand—that is to say, the one not trying to push its fingers between Adora's ribs—snapped up and around Adora's throat.

“Fine. I won't fight it anymore,” she said. _Snarled_ , really.

Adora forced herself to smile through the ache.

“I trust you,” she said, as firm as she could—and dragged Catra's claws down her side, grinning as the burn spread across her body.

Catra growled, and slashed. And _bit down—_

The rest of the night was a blur, honestly.

Morning came, eventually, after fitful sleep.

Adora's body burned and complained as she threw her legs over the side of the bed and hopped upright, but it didn't fail. She did, as promised, heal quick.

Maybe her brain did something as she slept. Scarred over, perhaps—something in her should, since her body wouldn't. The sheets were bloody, yes, but one of the nice things about being the incarnation of Etherian magic is that it was _really_ hard to hurt you so much you couldn't take it.

Adora looked at herself in the mirror, feeling only slightly weird about it. She wasn't the type to stare at her own nudity, in general, but it was probably prudent to give herself a once-over.

She remembered bits and pieces. She remembered how Catra stopped seeming angry, very quickly. That was the most clear thing—Catra had been purring as she tore into Adora's back, grinning deliriously as she lapped at Adora's wounds, _orgasming_ as she bit, deep and hard, into Adora's shoulder and shuddered as she tasted blood...

It was something happy. Something that was supposed to be beautiful and, if not kind, at least loving. That was the trouble with _instinct_ —it made _Catra_ angry. Angry, because it was so frightening. But perversely, the violent impulse came from a place of happiness. Of love. It was something her animal brain wanted to express but wasn't allowed to, because, well...it would be pretty hard on most people, and was even harder between the two of them because...

Because life was hard.

The past was just life you couldn't pretend hadn't happened.

Adora smiled as Catra's arms shyly snaked around her waist from behind—timidly, for someone who had spent a couple hours the night earlier purring and tearing her to bits. It wasn't like Catra to be timid, but this was probably the right time.

Adora just let her hands intertwine with Catra's and closed her eyes.  
  
Love is a choice you make, every moment of every day. And a love that disappears when it's hard, or painful, is a love as substantial as the wind.

She chose Catra. _Everything_ about Catra.

What was there to regret?  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Just something quick and lazy. It did a good job of scratching the itch of needing to jot something down, anyways.


End file.
